amartell@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Alex Martelli) Kiri's branding "I do not want to tie you up for this, Kiri: I would rather have you OFFER your flesh to the blade -- offer your pain to me. Can you do it?" Her chin trembles ever so slightly, her fingers twitch. I drink in and relish the abject terror shining in her eyes, so perfectly blended with love and submission. "I... I don't know, Master -- I might move... I do not think I can take that much pain... it WILL be terrible, won't it? Will I be allowed to scream...?" She was the same way, I remember, a couple of weeks ago, right before Tatto Luca started tattooing her design (a star and a moon and a spiral and a leaf, all within the compass of a blazing sun) onto her right hip; frightened by the prospect of pain, yet eager to offer it to me, eager to offer herself fully, ever more fully. I had assured her, at the time, that the pain wouldn't be SO bad: she had let herself go, trusting me totally, and soon she had flown high on the endorphins released. In a sense, she was the same way on the night of the day we had first met, six weeks ago, as she knelt naked for the first serious whipping of her life. She had not dared voice her fear then, had not dared ask how much it would hurt; I guess it felt like an unreal dream to both of us, back then, that we should be about to share such an experience, when we had known each other for just a few hours... But I had answered the unasked question anyway: it would hurt a LOT, I had explained in my deep soothing voice, sweet, self-assured, just the tiniest hint of excitement ringing in its tones; it WOULD hurt aplenty... but there would be so slow and gradual a build-up, that she would fly into the pain, float in it, and take MUCH more than she thought she was able to take. And indeed, she had offered herself in a wonderful dance under my whip, beautifully and totally, even at the end, when the welts crossed each other in a dense web of pain and her screams had become hoarse and breathless. I answer just as truthfully now. "You CAN take this pain, Kiri, my sweet wonderful slave. You can take all of it, because I want you to. And you are mine. Yes, it will be terrible. It will be atrocious, and sudden, with no warmup nor pauses for rest... But you will take it all, and offer it to me as the gift I demand, and forever after you will bear my brand, you will be my branded slave. You may scream if you wish, but I suggest you bite down on the handkerchief instead: it's going to last a rather long time, you know, you'd scream yourself hoarse well before it's over". She's trembling all over, now, her splendid young body curled up on the bed, her hands on her face. "Yes, my Master", I hear her whisper. "Just... may I have a blindfold, please? At least not have to look at the flame, at the blade heating on it, then searing my flesh...?" She asks so timidly, so shyly, almost as if she were afraid to ask. "Sure, my Kiri, my slave", I soothe her, "you will have this boon". I hug her for a long moment, then tie a blindfold around her eyes; she mumbles something, a "thank you my Master", I believe. I light up the large votive candle and place the knife's blade on it. Her right hip already has my monogram drawn on it with a felt-tip, a simple uppercase "A", a bit more than an inch high. Earlier, when I first had been ready to brand her, she had shied away from it, not safewording but still asking desperately for it to be postponed, for more pain to prepare herself for it. I had acceded to her request, extinguished the candle, let the blade cool, but still left my initial drawn on her, that it could soak her soul with its magic, bring her to the point of total acceptance and submission that we both craved. Now, after much pain, an orgasm, and more pain still, she is ready, at last, her flesh eager for the touch of my heated blade as much as it remains deadly afraid of it. Our own private Halloween celebration is about to start in earnest... I put music on the CD now: Grateful Dead. It had been Deep Purple in the earlier scene, but I want another mood now; she's already had the message I wanted her to get from the Purple anyway -- "A time for passion, a time for pain, a time to learn that we're all the same..." The blade is ready. So is her body, her trembling subsided. I hold her legs down with mine, just enough to help her stay still. I gently insert the handkerchief between her teeth, just a suggestion, then I take the knife's handle in my hand... The hot blade touches her skin, and I slide its edge over it, splitting and searing it at the same time. She goes all rigid, all tense, bites down hard on the handkerchief, and emits a thin high-pitched voiceless wail from somewhere down deep in her throat. The wail continues, as her body tenses and untenses and starts trembling again, and yet, throughout, she keeps offering it to me, as I carefully and gently carve each line into her. When I first heat the blade up again, she even manages to speak -- "How long, Master? How much longer will this torture last...?", her tear-filled voice implores. "It WILL be long, dearest slave. Sure, a simple firebrand would be easier to take, wouldn't it? One terrible moment, and it's done... but that's not what I want you to suffer, beloved: I want you to feel THIS pain, this lingering and searing pain of your flesh being carved and burned and shaped into the mark of your slavery -- your slavery to me. Don't dare run away from this pain: I want you to feel it all, every last drop -- I want every fiber of your body screaming ``NO!!!'' -- and yet you still offering it all to me in sacrifice..." And the blade is ready again, and again it goes to work on her right hip... It's not THAT long, really: overall, less than 30 minutes. But I know how it feels, to be on the other side of a burning blade, and time takes on a very different meaning then. Minutes become lifetimes... no matter what the clock may say, it does not diminish the worth of her offer to me. "Consummatum est", my voice rings out at last. It is accomplished. I cleanse the wounds as carefully as I have inflicted them. My hands make the last few passes of mudra, thanking the blade for its sharpness, the flame for its heat, Kiri's body for its pain. A drop of cow's milk quenches the candle's flame. Meanwhile, my beloved slave's body is slowly recovering from its shaking, her whimpers subsiding. At last I hear her sweet voice again, asking as if she could not believe it -- "Is... is it done? It's -- it's really over?". "It is, my Kiri, creature of dream, creature of beauty, creature of love", I murmur softly in her ear. "It is! Careful, though, don't move: I have not dressed the wound yet, you deserve a good look at it before it has to be covered". My hands freed of the latex gloves, I remove her blindfold, and show her my handiwork, the blackened lines tracing my initial on her body. "There -- how does it feel now, how does it look, to be my branded slave?" "It... it is simply wonderful, Master!", she exclaims, an almost unbelieving joy in her tone. I know she is not talking of the simple, stark design in itself, but rather of the wonder of it all, our love and her slavery and my mastership and the brand and the pain and the happiness filling us both to overflowing. "Very handy too", I comment, as I check if any more cleaning is needed and then start dressing the wound -- "slaves should all be branded, you know... it's like sewing a name tag on clothes: prevents any confusion..." I get what I was after: her new euphoria explodes in a silvery laugh, HER laugh, as unmistakable as the flavour of her lips in a kiss, her laughter that so often rings out, even in moments which I used to think inappropriate -- her laughter which I now find as indispensable as air to breathe... It's not a new joke, of course, but then she wouldn't know -- she's always been an occasional reader of a.s.b, at best, and has had no access to it at all since arriving here in Italy, late this summer. Her university had a clever idea, IMO, in arranging for some architecture students to spend a semester here -- the last few millennia of Italian architecture no doubt DO have some important lessons for any architect -- but unfortunately it was apparently impossible for them to arrange net access as well; the connectivity situation here is deplorable... I have managed to give her a few hours online to her accounts during the days she's spent here in Bologna (all weekends since that first one, and once a full week of vacation in her lessons), but those hours she preferred to devote to e-mail. Sometime I wonder if that's what had originally moved her to contact me -- a chance for a break in an otherwise 4-months long hiatus from the net -- but she's probably right in saying that it hadn't really come into the picture; that what she had wanted was exactly what she had asked for in those few mails we had exchanged last spring, a chance to see Bologna and to be shown around it by a native. Well, she had hoped for two natives, originally: she had asked to meet Laylah, too, of course. Our a.s.b posts had cut both ways -- they were the reason she knew of us as Bolognese, but at the same time they had generally proved too long and verbose to hold her interest; she skipped most of them, and indeed was a bit worried -- "I just hope they don't think I'm some ``a.s.b groupie'' just waiting to fawn all over them", was her mindset at the time, or at least the way she put it later as she and I were trying to understand the whys and wherefores of the wonderful thing that had happened between us. Pretty lucky she had gone ahead and mailed us anyway back then, and phoned us on a Friday when she was changing trains in Bologna station (hardly a surprising occurrence, Bologna being such a major node), since she had no plans for the following weekend... ... ...pretty lucky she found me home then, too. I'm always at work at lunchtime. But that was Fri, Sep 17, the very day Laylah and I had been at our lawyer's to sign the consensual separation papers, and later spent the rest of the morning touring the various utilities' offices to switch contracts from her name into mine. I was rather depressed, but took the occasion to meet this American visitor and show her around my beloved city as a welcome distraction from the depression itself. I explained that Laylah would not be around, and why, but that didn't seem to be a problem for her. So we had met at the station, Saturday right after lunch. We had checked the train schedule for trains back to her college, seeing that it was quite inconvenient for her to have to go back that very day; so I had offered her a place to stay, in one of the beds which used to be my kids', and she had accepted. I had taken her to my home, introduced her to my parents and sister who live next door, and prepared the bed for her; then, leaving her luggage there, we had embarked on a delightful tour of Bologna's touristic high spots in an equally delightful sunny and cool late summer afternoon. Bologna isn't a major tourist attraction, but that's just because we Bolognese prefer to avoid the big crowds... features of interest are certainly not lacking! I showed her the spot where three arrows are still stuck in the wooden rafters of an arcade since a civil war of many centuries ago; I showed her the Church of St Stephen, with the inscription quite readable in the wall dedicating the building to "Domina Isis Victrix" (it was an Isis temple before being a Christian church, and an Etruscan temple before that, and a Celtic one before that, and...); the Church of St Petronius, visibly interrupted in its construction (by the machinations of the Roman clergy who didn't want Bologna to have a larger church than St Peter's); the castle cum palace cum fortress cum prison where Heinz, King of Germany, was kept prisoner for decades after being captured by the Bolognese armies; our "portici" (arcades), more of them than any other city in the world, and the longest arcade in the world in particular; our University, the oldest lay one in the Western world, the one which made "Alma Mater" (its proper name, "Nourishing Mother", from a painting of Mary suckling the Child to which it was dedicated) the generic term for "university"; our TWO leaning towers, the taller one much higher than Pisa's more famous one...; and so many other things that I can hardly believe they all fit in one afternoon, when I look back at it. It was a happy-making afternoon, as I threw myself fully into the pleasant task of showing all these familiar things to someone for whom they were quite novel, and savoured again, vicariously, the joy of discovering them, seeing them once again as new and surprising through the fresh eyes of the visitor. So new and fresh herself, in her 19 years, just half my age, that the joy was doubled -- still a lot of that general "looking at the world with wonder" which makes young people so special, and yet coupled with plenty of historical and architectural culture -- unsurprising, of course, in a brilliant straight-A student of architecture, but... there was something more, and on both scores. Her freshness was not just that of any teen-ager; there was a special touch of humour, of openness, a special blossoming forth of smiles and laughter and sparkling eyes and bouncy walk and enthusiasm and intensity, that made going around with her just like being young again. Nor was her depth purely intellectual and cultural -- there were unmistakable signs of, well -- WISDOM; of balance, of centeredness, of groundedness -- not "counterbalancing" the enthusiasm, but, on the contrary, providing the base and the springing-board for it. Don't ask me for words to explain how I learned of that, for it was not in words that I did; it just SHOWED itself. We were not really flirting, that afternoon; much less was either of us "courting" or "scoping out" the other. No, we were doing exactly what we had set out to do -- soak up as much of Bologna as we could in one afternoon. Getting to know each other was a pleasant side effect, as was the surprising but soon accepted reciprocal familiarity, as if we had known each other for ages, as if we had always been MEANT to know each other... Of course we told each other much about ourselves, in jokes and quips as well as in earnest. She learned about my kids and ex-wife, about my bisexuality and polyamory and my grief at Laylah's loss and the ways I was getting over it...; I learned about her family and her studies and her friends, and her tastes (also bisexual and poly) and the difficulty of living them at a conservative, Baptist university, and of how she had chosen it anyway for the excellence of its architecture school... I also learned of her almost non-existent BDSM experience, and of her fascination for BDSM and bodyart. Finally tired from many hours of walking, we sat down on benches at the Montagnola gardens, and I removed my suit jacket and showed her my tattoos as example of Tattoo Luca's handiwork (the gardens host an "alternative market" on Saturdays -- I had looked more out of place elegantly though comfortably suited up, than I did bare-chested and tattoo-sporting...:-). And I had learned of the problems with her articulations, apt to pop out of their sockets, and commented about the trouble that this could give with bondage; and she had remarked about her fascination with hands and feet, and I had joked about how she should really try D/S, where she could kiss hands and feets to her lips' content... It was only then that for the first time it dawned in my mind that perhaps we might both be interested in playing together... I reviewed the bidding in my mind. We had been joking a lot about intimacy and BDSM -- but not even to "social flirting" levels. I had given her a peck on the lips, for example, quite early in our acquaintance, a kiss that a mutual e-mail friend (hi Mr Bubble!) had recommended I give her on his part if she and I should ever meet, and joked that, should I ever give her a kiss on my own behalf, I would of course be much more passionate, as befits an Italian lover, but, since this was on an American's part, a peck seemed to be about right... silly jokes without any second-level meaning, that sort of stuff, and she had quite obviously taken them as such and laughed heartily. She touched a lot, a level of physical closeness and intimacy normal in Italy between friends, but not in America; but then, she did have some Italian ancestry in her blood. In short, nothing much to go on. Well, should I explore further? First of all, did I *want* to? I didn't know. If I had asked myself on the day before, the answer would have been -- of course NOT: I knew all about the risk of "falling in love on the rebound", and had been extremely careful about it. But now? I felt such an easy familiarity with this person, as if we were long-time friends... and such wisdom in her as well as in myself, that the risk seemed laughable -- no, surely neither of us would do something foolish, something to be regretted in the future. No significant downside risks. As for the positive, I found her personality extremely attractive, and that was all that mattered -- yes, I DID want to see if she was interested in playing. You'll find it hard to believe, but if I had been blindfolded and interrogated at that very moment, I would have found it hard to answer the question of whether she was physically attractive as well. I simply had not looked at her "that way" so far; I don't place that much stock in the looks of people (to be honest, of women in particular; with men, I do feel some superficial attraction for ones with striking looks, though they need not be the specific looks that society deems handsome). I was once scolded by a friend who had just met Laylah for failing to mention that she was such a beauty -- I had apparently been too enwrapped in singing odes about the perfection of her soul and mind and heart, to be bothered with praising her body enough, too... Anyway, since we were close and I had started thinking of that, I now did look better at the American visitor, and, yes, she also happened to be a beautiful woman. Maybe not a candidate for a beauty queen, since those tend to be tall and with a somewhat undernourished look, while she was well muscled, wide-shouldered, and a bit on the short side; but her hourglass shape and regular features would make her pass any test for "socially accepted standards of beauty", too, no doubt, for what that can matter. This could be relevant: with her looks and her brains and her sweet delicious personality, she was no doubt used to being fawned over by all manner of males (and females, too, surely, in as much as she moved in bi and lesbian circles), so it wasn't out of the question that, simply by not showing any such interest so far, I had turned her off. On the other hand, sometimes particularly attractive people find that even refreshing, not to have to stave off unwanted advances for a while. I decided not to decide yet -- it was time for dinner, and then we could maybe go out for some nightlife, and there could be some suitable occasion for a cautious advance on my part; and if not, good, anyway -- it was at any rate a rather long shot that she should be interested in first attempting serious BDSM this very night, and with me specifically, and I for sure did not want any vanilla affair right then. As we walked towards the restaurant, I bought a local newspaper, to check what was going on that Saturday night, and asked about what she liked in terms of music, shows and other nightlife. "Oh, you can decide", she remarked, "I am so very easy to please!" -- and not with her usual laughter, but with a sort of demure smile, and with averted eyes too. Funny way to put things... did I get a hint of a hint...? It was at the restaurant that I thought I knew for sure. As I explained to her the various kinds of Bolognese specialties which she could have, she made another similar remark: "I would like you to order, please; I'm sure that whatever you choose will be fine... I trust you!". Another perfectly innocent remark, of course, socially respectable and still fully maintaining "believable deniability" -- but I KNEW: some combination of her words and her non-verbal language was telling me that, yes, she was interested in playing with me, more specifically in bottoming to me. I could at least feel justified in making advances in that sense. So I had her taste small portions of several Bolognese specialties, with a light local white tablewine, ending in the traditional coffee with eggcream; then we took a bus back home, there to examine the night's events and drive to one. Not much of any interest was on, though. As I showed her the various possibilities, I could sense she shared my rather unfavourable opinions. In the end, I thought that directness was much the best option. I looked right in her eyes -- "Or, of course, we could spend the evening right here... playing. I would really love to show you a little of what BDSM is about, just as I loved showing you Bologna today. What do you think of this?". Sounds rather artless in retrospect, as I think back to it now -- but, judging from results, it must have been just the right tack, for she gulped and nodded, and we went straight into open negotiation. I loved her negotiating style. She set boundaries very clearly: no permanent marks. Then she expressed her trust in me and informed me of all relevant factors -- about her health, about her very limited experiences, about how she shared her bedroom with other students to which she wasn't (and didn't want to be) out about BDSM stuff, and what bodyparts she would have problems hiding from them if heavily marked... gave me all relevant information, trusting me to handle it for the best. I set my own boundaries: "no sex". Her face fell a bit at that. I explained I meant this in a very narrow, specific sense: I would not penetrate her with my penis. This was partly my general stance, that I *only* do "sex" (in the narrowest sense) in very specific circumstances, and particularly with "love" (in my own, demanding sense of the word) fully, unmistakably, and indisputably assured on both sides; and partly a specific decision of mine regarding my emotional status at the time, the extra prudence which I wanted to use to avoid "rebound" risks. It is probably just some sort of fetish on my part, but I think that good old penis-vagina and penis-anus sex carries a huge emotional baggage, with attendant risks, which make it very ill-advised for me to engage in it AT ALL "casually". No doubt "casual sex" works fine for some other people, but I know from experience that it simply doesn't work for me. (It's funny to think that many no doubt feel the same towards my own acceptance of "casual play" and other sensual and sexual intimacies:-) "So, you see, I have no problems with you having an orgasm, and indeed do plan on giving you one", I concluded, "it just won't be my penis to be involved in giving it...". "Well", she commented, her expression rather dubious -- "I don't think I'll have one -- I have no problems orgasming from intercourse, but almost never reach orgasm otherwise... anyway, OK, I respect your stance and your prudence -- pity, though, for I really so hoped to make you a gift of all I could give..." I was struck by this last sentence -- and so, I could see, was she; struck by the depth and breadth of the commitment it implied, so at odds with her youth, her inexperience, the fact that we had only known each other for a few hours... and yet, I could not doubt the sincerity of the words, nor the feelings behind them. I saw her chewing the words over in her mind, surprised at having uttered them -- more surprised still, at finding them true. She could not give me her all that night, but what she did give was a real surprise to her, since she had not known she had it in herself to give. She thought that spanking WAS within her modest experience, but was unprepared for the spanking she received from me -- so long, so heavy, so mixed in with fondling and pinches and bites to her large, strong buttocks, that she carried the marks of it throughout the next week. And the whip, and hot wax, and kneeling at my feet and kissing them desperately, and licking my hands still burning from the blows they had imparted, and feeling my feet tread on her naked body strewn on the floor, and having her hair grabbed and her face yanked this way and that, and slapped, and her lips bruised by a ferocious kiss... And, no, it was NOT hard for her to orgasm -- with my naked body pressing down on hers, my lips and teeth playing with her nipples and areolas, my hands finger-fucking and caressing and grabbing and scratching and pinching and tracing her welts -- she came explosively, violently, far sooner than I had thought she would. We slid into sleep together, side by side, still embraced under the sheets of my bed; the "guest bed", of course, was not used that night. And, yes, the words "I love you" DID come out; the experiences we shared had bound us deeply and wonderfully. We were woken up quite early the next morning, after far too little sleep, by my mother's urgent rapping on the window panes. A railway strike was on... only major trains would run, and precious few of those! We washed and dressed in a hurry, went over to my parents' to have coffee, then my mother drove us to the station, where we found chaos. At last I managed to get the American beauty into the last train back to her college, and as it left I stood there, on the platform, shaking my head, unbelieving -- had it all been but a splendid dream...? The suddenness of it, and the suddenness of our parting, made it all look unreal... would I ever see her again? Oh boy - would I ever! And we were able to share so many things... twice she topped me, once at length in a scene of teasing and tickling and sweet pain-less domination, once in a wonderful and painful scene where she scratched her initial onto my back; and I lost count of the times and ways I topped her. I introduced her to fisting, and now she often begs me for it, floating in its totality of sensation... And I cooked for her, and we washed dishes together, and we went shopping together, and we visited more beautiful places, and we spent an afternoon playing games with my kids, and she sketched a portrait of me and one of Flavia, and I introduced her to my friends and we spent a delightful afternoon with them, she kneeling at my feet with my chain locked around her neck... She asked me to give her a name: and I chose Kiri. Kiri is a wondrous wood: light and strong, easily worked yet resistant to damage, its pale colour making it the ideal base for lacquer work... and the kirimon, made of three of its leaves and three of its flowers, is the Imperial symbol of Japan -- the glorious potential of my Kiri matching it, too, perfectly. And, as always when a name is chosen, coincidences abound... "Kiri" is the Amalthean word for "slave", in the writings of my beloved Topazzz; and that reference I had well in mind when I chose the name, and it is, in part, meant in honour to her. But other coincidences I had not present to the surface of my mind when I chose... Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is a great soprano, starring in Losey's movie of Mozart's Don Giovanni as Donna Elvira... and Don Giovanni, with Zerlina's aria "Batti batti bel Masetto", where she invites her husband-to-be to beat her and promises she'll only kiss his hands while he does, is in the running for most BDSM-relevant opera...:-). And my own Kiri does sing soprano -- she was in her State's Madrigal Choir... and her singing is as delicious as everything about her is. And "Kirie", of course, is "Lord", in Greek. And my Kiri's second language is French -- and once she asked me, "Master, had you also considered the French pronunciation of ``Kiri'' -- same as ``qui rit'', ``who laughs''..." -- and, indeed, her silvery laugh is such a major feature of her demeanour... She also has names for me... "Sir" is the one she uses most often. Lately, though, "Master" and "my sweet Master" seem to have overtaken it in frequency... "Alex" I hear but rarely; just about the same frequency as "you bastard", I'd say. The latter, thankfully, has always been in a laughing context... we haven't had even one single "spat", so far. I guess a ``proper'' Master is supposed to nip in the bud any such show of independence by the slave -- but then, I've never been much of a ``proper'' anything; I tend to do what I think is right (aka "will work"), as opposed to what's proper or expected of me... Only once or twice have I had occasion to judge Kiri's headspace "not right", unsuited for wherever I was driving the scene towards, and then I've had no problem bringing her back to deep and total submission; in most cases, her laughs, her playful mood, has fitted my desire perfectly. She carries my chain locked around her neck at all times now; when she is far from me, not having the key to the lock gives her, she tells me, a delicious thrill, making her feel loved, owned, MINE. On weekends, when we're together, I sometimes remove that chain only to exchange it for a collar -- a leather one, often; at times, a steel one, with leather lining, heavy and hard and terrible and wonderful... only once did I have her sleep in full bondage, and then it was that steel collar, leather cuffs on her wrists locked together to the D-ring on the collar's front, and leather cuffs on her ankles, secured with ropes to the bed, keeping her legs wide open. It was a very interesting night, though maybe not all that restful... ... Her brand's wound is dressed now. She's bubbling with joy, filled with irrepressible enthusiasm. "Master, oh Master, oh my sweet Master -- what a wonderful thing, that you have marked me with an ``A''...!", she exclaims, her eyes sparkling. "You mean because, besides being my initial, ``it's a beginning''?", I double-check her meaning. I see some surprise in her eyes at my "having caught it", though we're both getting used to it by now -- at times it seems like we're reading each other's mind. I'm perhaps more frequently the "reader", most likely just because I'm the older and more experienced one -- I'm likelier to "have been" where she now is, than the reverse. But anyway, it's not all that surprising -- there are deep similarities between us, it's part of what drew us together in the first place, so clearly it's to be expected that our minds will often work in the same way... "Anyway, my dearest slave, you've been so strong, so wonderful, so just deliciously perfect, that it is my wish to grant you a prize now. Just ask. Would you like", I start enumerating, "something to eat...? to drink...?" She smiles, of course -- she knows I'm going to make some more tempting offer... "...perhaps more pain, a spanking maybe?" She shakes her head, momentarily worried -- she's learned to appreciate pain, yes, but right now she's been overwhelmed by even too much of it! I go on: "Something sexual then? Caresses? My mouth? A fisting?" At the last word, she starts nodding -- she must believe we've reached the apex of what I'm going to offer, and is about to say "yes" -- but I still go on. "Or perhaps you might like for me to fuck you?", and here I pause and savour the effect. The silence is striking -- she's holding her breath, wide-eyed. She speaks at last -- "you mean... you mean, Master, you mean..." "But yes, of course, Kiri, just like always: I mean exactly what I said. If you want, your prize can be my cock in your cunt. After all, now that you've dropped all boundaries you had originally set, it does seem just right I should drop mine, too, and after all right now I can hardly doubt our reciprocal eternal devotion, since the brand on your hip is not something that's going to go away easily, and..." My usual verbosity is cut short in her favourite way -- she throws herself at me, her mouth hungry on mine, her strong arms hugging the breath out of me, her even stronger legs enwrapping mine in the tightest grip. And at last I feel free and safe not to hold anything back, anything at all -- to make her a gift of all I have to give, and let her give herself to me just as totally...! To be perfectly honest, I do NOT believe that intercourse was, for her, as thrilling as all that, physically at least; I think I'm far more skilled with my hands and with my mouth, than with my cock; and, with possible exceptions for some lucky latex fetishists, condoms are always a bother. But anyway, you surely couldn't get Kiri to admit it -- "Oh, ooh, Master, my sweet Master, you're so good", she kept saying... I suspect that my beloved slave's wisdom fully extends to the field of the care and feeding of males' delicate egos:-). For ME, at any rate, feeling at last around my cock those strong and supple muscles that had so often enwrapped my fisting hand WAS a splendid physical experience, just as I had expected. Still, for both of us, I maintain that the emotional and spiritual worth of the act counted for more than any possible physical aspect, no matter how modest, or on the other hand how sublime. And later she was whipped again, and she took it with even more perfection than usual -- no flinching, no screams, just an endless repetition of sweet and touching words, her answer to Victor Hugo's beautiful, sad poem -- "Pas seule, pas inconnue, mon dos courbe` -- pour vous, mon maitre, pour vous...!"... Two more weekends are all we've left, before I leave on my US trip. And one more on my return, in Amsterdam, just as she's leaving to go back home... "Each instant is an eternity", I keep reminding her -- "don't let fear and hope disturb the eternal present -- be HERE, be NOW!". There is no doubt whatsoever, that one day we two shall meet again -- and renew the magic of our first meeting, wherever, and whenever, Fate will be ready for us! Alex